Archive for January 2006

Bosses Don’t Realize How Unhappy Workers Are

POSTED: 8:58 am EST January 30,

2006

NEEDHAM, Mass. — People don’t appear to be as happy with their jobs as their bosses think they are.
In a survey by Salary.com, nearly 80 percent of those asked said they’d
recently searched online job postings, and updated their resumes. Human
Resources managers, on the other hand, believe that on average only
about 40 percent of their employee base is doing that. Additionally, although people might be unhappy with their jobs, it wouldn’t take much to get them to stay.
More than half of those asked by Salary.com said a pay raise of less
than 15 percent would persuade them to stay in a job they dislike.
Another 20 percent said they’d stay for an increase of under 10 percent.
According to the survey, the top three reasons people leave their jobs
are poor managers, inadequate compensation and lack of advancement
opportunities.

Salaries and signing bonuses of fresh graduates
took a double-digit jump in 2005 to a record average $106,000 and
signaled an end to the "perfect storm" of sour news this decade that
included the dot-com bust, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and a
subsequent recession, said Dave Wilson, president of the Graduate
Management Admissions Council (GMAC) that oversees the test for
aspiring graduate students in business.

Corporate recruiters had disappeared from
campuses. But, Wilson reports, "The MBA is back as the currency of
intellectual capital."

The $106,000 salary and signing bonus was up
13.5% from 2004, according to a GMAC survey of 5,829 2005 grads. Salary
alone increased to $88,600, surpassing the previous high of $85,400 set
in 2001. The 2005 salary still trails 2001 by about $4,000 when
adjusted for inflation, but the inflation-adjusted record will likely
be broken this year.

Consulting firms and investment banks, the
best-paying employers of freshly minted MBAs, had been slashing jobs.
"They’re back and hiring aggressively," says Nunzio Quacquarelli, the
London-based director of the QS World MBA Tour that recruits students
to 350 business schools in 56 cities worldwide.

The average bonus paid to a 2005 MBA graduate by investment banks was $40,000, Quacquarelli says.

Other forces are behind the rising compensation.
The health care industry craves MBAs to help manage spiraling costs,
and schools such as Boston University offer an MBA for those looking
for careers ranging from hospital administration to biotech.

Technology hiring showed signs of life last year
and is building steam in 2006, Quacquarelli says. Even the outsourcing
of jobs to places such as India is driving demand for MBAs. The Labor
Department estimates the outsourcing industry will need 2,000 senior
executives this year, up from 100 in 2000. By 2012, it will need 9,500.

Wilson says there is also heavy demand for MBAs
by the U.S. government and not-for-profit organizations. Salaries are
not as high, but added demand is likely driving them up elsewhere.

The trend is global, according to a survey out
Tuesday by QS World MBA Tour. Average salary and bonus for new MBAs was
up 10% in 2005 to $114,000, also breaking the record set in 2001.

More than 100,000 MBA degrees are awarded each
year in the USA alone. That’s likely to rise. Prospective students who
took the Graduate Management Admission Test rose to 228,000 in 2005
from 213,000 in 2004. And this year has started strong, Wilson says.

There are 1,500 schools worldwide offering MBAs,
a number poised to explode, Quacquarelli says, as programs in China,
India and Russia take off.

"As pertaining to the custody of the children," the judge continued,
"the court has decided that it would be in the children’s best
interests if full custody were henceforth awarded to the mother."

My mother then uttered a long sigh of relief. Although I was only
eight years old, I knew that I had just witnessed a life-changing
decision. My parents had officially obtained a divorce. I had undergone
a month of attorneys’ interviews, courtroom drama and private
dissertations in the judge’s chambers, so I then knew why my mother had
sighed. My father’s lawyer (or, as I referred
to him, the angry loud man) had by far overshadowed my mother’s more
mellow attorney, and this fact was reflected in the divorce decree.
Aside from a minimal child support payment and a division of the mutual
assets, my mother received next to nothing for ten loyal years of
marriage. As our broken family relocated to a small, two-bedroom
apartment, I searched for someone to blame. Although I was too young to
understand the complicated legal proceedings, I observed how "the big,
important guy" (the judge) seemed to listen more attentively to "the
angry loud man." When I asked my mother the reason for this inequality,
she said something about not having the same resources that my father
had. So I was convinced that "the loud angry man" who wanted a lot of
resources
was the cause of my unhappy situation. For the next year, I repeatedly
asked questions about lawyers. While my peers were still insisting that
they were going to be ninja fighters or ballerinas, I proclaimed my
future as a very loud lawyer that did not require a lot of resources to
do a good job.

As I grew and matured, I realized that my childish declaration would
require dedication. To adjust to my new school and family situation, I
eased the transition with extracurricular activities. I especially
became interested in public-speaking, which was reflected in my growing
confidence at school and my outspoken personality at home. The jump
from middle school to high school shifted my attentions from 4-H
debates and school elections to more in-depth experiences. Sophomore
year I discovered a rare opportunity in the Boy Scouts Law Exploring
Post. This group provided first-hand insights into modern law careers
and enabled me to directly experience numerous aspects of legal
medicine.

Enticing lectures from the district attorney, personal interviews
with private lawyers and observational trips to local courthouses not
only furthered my interest in more popular, romanticized courtroom
action, but also expanded my interests to include the more practical
applications of the law.

I have found within myself a passion for understanding and upholding
the institutions by which man attempts to govern himself. One day I
hope to be a productive part of the American justice system without
losing touch of how deeply my efforts can affect a person’s life. So
now that I have established a clear path to my goal, I must gather my
resources.

This stone was introduced to Europe in the early eighteeth century by the Dutch, who discovered it in Ceylon. The Singhalese referred to it as toramalli, a word also used to decribe zicons. The Dutch renamed it aschentrekker, meaning "ash puller" due to an unusual property with which pipe-smoking Dutch sailors were once familiar: when heated, tourmaline becomes electrically charged and thusattracts ash and dust. Dutch sailer used it to empty the ash from the bowl of their meerschaum pipes.No other gem comes in such a vast array of colors. Single-color tormailnes are rare. Most display a multitude of color nuances blendinng one into the other, or concentric colored layers. One such specimen is the famous watermelon tourmaline, which has a pink heart surrounded by green. The most coveted tourmaline – rubellite is red, hence its name. King Gusta of Sweden presented Empress Catherine II of Russia with a rubellite weighing 250 carats, still conserved in the Diamond Fund in Moscow. The rarest, indicolite, a deep blue-green.

The most common color for tourmaline is green. The muse’s stone, tourmaline is said to give wings to the artist’s imagination.

Borosilicate of aluminum. Hardness: 7 to 7.5 Birthstone of the month of OctoberSymbol of creativity and inspirationAfghanistan, Brazil, U.S., Madagascar, Russia, Sri Lanka

Opinion. Presents an author’s view about the dark side of prayer.
Science and supplication; Prayer’s paradox; Power of negative prayers.
INSET: The evil within us all?

The doctor who almost single-handedly legitimized the study of
prayer inmedicine now talks about prayer’s surprising shadow side.

I grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt–the fundamentalist
county of Limestone, Texas, where a lot of praying went all the time. I
remember once when I was six years old, a young preacher was discoursing
on the fires of hell in a tiny, country church, on a cold, wintry
night–perhaps to warm up the room. There were about 12 folks in
attendance.

For nearly 30 minutes he described Satan and the flames of eternal
damnation, and began to beat on the pulpit to simulate the drums of hell.
At the climax of his sermon he had someone turn off all the lights as he
lapsed into prayer for lost sinners. My six-year-old mind was utterly
hypnotized by fear, and when the invitation for salvation was offered, I
numbly stumbled forward–only half-conscious-to be saved.

I learned early on that there could be a raw, brutal edge to
religion and prayer. Even though I moved beyond this spiritual territory
as I grew older, I carried with me a legacy I consider very important–an
enduring interest in prayer. It’s impossible to grow up in a
fundamentalist environment and not be fascinated by the capacity of
prayer to catalyze change in people’s lives. For me, prayer remains one
of the most effective methods of finding meaning, because it is a way of
contacting a dimension of experience that seems wiser, deeper, and more
real than an individual sense of self.

Claims that people can actually influence the health and well-being
of others through prayer are often met with skepticism and derision. As
one of my colleagues remarked, "This is the kind of thing I would not
believe even if it existed." Yet it does exist. I’ve written at length
about the astonishing capacity of prayer to heal, even over long
distances and when the recipient does not know they are being prayed for.
It’s unclear how any form of energy currently known to modern physics can
account for the distant influence of prayer, but abundant anecdotal and
experimental evidence supports this phenomenon.

I stumbled onto the research about prayer and healing in 1988, when
I read a study by Randolph Byrd, M.D., a cardiologist at the University
of California at San Francisco School of Medicine. Dr. Byrd tested the
impact of distant prayer much like a new medication, recording its
effects on 393 patients who all had severe chest pains and/or heart
attacks; half were prayed for, and half were not. The prayed-for group
required fewer antibiotics (three in the prayed-for group, compared to 17
in the group not prayed for), had less need for mechanical respirators
(zero compared to 12), required fewer diuretics (five compared to 15),
suffered less congestive heart failure (eight compared to 20),
experienced less cardiopulmonary arrest (three compared to 14), and fell
ill with pneumonia less often (three compared to 13).

This study does not stand alone. David Larson, M.D., formerly at
the National Institutes of Health, and now director of the National
Institute for Healthcare Research, a private research organization in
Rockville, Maryland, which explores the role of religious practice in
health, has reviewed over 200 studies examining the role of faith and
religion on health. In the majority of cases, faith is beneficial.

In 1995, a pilot study on the use of distant healing and prayer for
AIDS patients was initiated by psychiatrist Elisabeth Targ, M.D.,
clinical director of psychosocial oncology research at California Pacific
Medical Center in San Francisco. Twenty patients with advanced AIDS were
randomly selected, and half received 10 weeks of distant healing from 20
professional healers across the country. Blood and psychological tests
were administered before and after the study, as well as three months
later. Results were encouraging, and Dr. Targ is now conducting a larger
study involving 60 AIDS patients and healers. She’s also seeking funds
for a similar study with breast cancer. It is studies such shed light on
the way that prayer can be alongside conventional medicine.

SCIENCE AND SUPPLICATION

Prayer, when studied, usually has positive results. But what about
prayer’s capacity to harm? Most people choose to believe that thoughts
and prayers work positively or not at all. But we cannot hide from the
mind’s power to harm. Everyone is aware of the placebo response–the
impact of positive belief. But the flip side of this phenomenon is the
nocebo effect, the ability of negative beliefs and expectations to cause
harm. For example, in a provocative British study of patients with
stomach cancer, patients thought they were taking a chemotherapy drug,
but were actually receiving a placebo. One-third developed nausea,
one-fifth developed vomiting, and almost one-third lost their hair. (This
study was conducted with the patients’ consent, and they were ultimately
given the proper drugs.)

But can our thoughts affect events and peoples’ actions? Various
experiments suggest that they are capable of distorting the classic
double-blind experimental design, influencing the outcome of medical
studies. In several different studies on the effectiveness of vitamin E
on angina, the results could be directly correlated with the researchers’
positive or negative expectations. If researchers thought the vitamin
would affect the disease positively, it did, and if they thought it
wouldn’t have any effect, it didn’t. In another landmark study by
parapsychologist Gerald Solfvin, Ph.D., professor at Rosebridge Graduate
School of Integrative Psychology in Concord, California, experimenters
who believed they were injecting mice with two different doses of malaria
recorded differing degrees of illness in the mice–despite the fact there
was no difference in the strength of the two injections.

Several studies suggest that people can use their minds to promote
or inhibit the growth of bacteria and fungi at a distance of up to 15
miles. Jean Barry, M.D., a physician practicing in Bordeaux, France,
chose a destructive fungus, Rhizoctonia solani, and asked 10 people to
try and inhibit its growth merely through their intention. The growth of
the fungus was significantly retarded in 151 of 194 cases. The
possibility that these results could be explained by chance was less than
one in a thousand. When the study was repeated by different researchers,
individuals up to 15 miles away inhibited the growth. A third remarkable
study tested 60 university volunteers’ ability to alter a common strain
of bacteria, Escherichia coli. The strain normally mutates from the
inability to metabolize milk sugar-lactose negative–to the ability to
use it–lactose positive–at a known rate. Using nine test tubes of
bacteria, subjects tried to influence three of them to become lactose
positive, three to become lactose negative, and three to remain just as
they were. Each group of test tubes mutated in the desired
directions.

The implications of these and similar studies are sobering, to say
the least. They suggest that we can use our minds to help or harm other
living things, at a distance, and outside their awareness. These
experiments may be relevant to humans. Even though we are far more
complex, we share many identical biochemical processes with
microorganisms, harbor billions of microbes within us. If we can harm
bacteria and fungi with negative intention from a distance, might we be
able to harm humans as well?

Studies of purposeful negative prayer have only taken place in
lower organisms, because it’s unethical and illegal to attempt
experiments in humans that might intentionally cause harm. However, that
doesn’t mean we don’t carry on such inadvertent experiments every day,
outside scientific laboratories.

Indeed, even when our prayers are overwhelmingly positive and
sincere, their results can be harmful. Consider some of our most common
prayers for happiness, prosperity, and fertility. If all the prayers for
prosperity were answered, the environment would probably not be able to
survive the impact, simply because of our limited resources. This problem
would be compounded by prayers for fertility, which, if answered, would
make the problem of overpopulation incalculably worse; and in areas of
the world where prayers for fertility focus solely on sons, answered
prayers have truly harmful consequences for the future of women.

PRAYER PARADOX

Today, negative prayer is all around us. It’s I not confined to
sorcerers, dabblers in black I magic, or occult religious traditions. By
and large, it is a practice unconsciously engaged in by perfectly normal,
well-meaning folk.

Growing up, I was always puzzled by that paradoxical high school
football phenomenon, the pregame prayer, in which opposing teams gather
in their respective locker rooms and pray to Almighty God that they will
beat the daylights out of the* rivals. I wondered how such prayers could
possibly be answered. What was a god faced with competing prayers to do?
In The Future of the Body, Michael Murphy, founder of the Esalen
Institute, a center for consciousness research located in Big Sur,
California, writes, "Many sports fans consciously or half-consciously
feel that rooting has an effect that goes beyond mere
encouragement….Witness the many hexes aimed at games via radios and
television sets. If rooting channels or triggers powers of mind over
matter, it is no wonder that during certain contests balls take funny
bounces and athletes jump higher than ever or stumble
inexplicably."

Prayers for victory–whether in sports or in any other of life’s
competitive situations–are often at another’s expense. When grasshoppers
invaded Mormon crops in Great Salt Lake Valley, Utah, in 1848, church
leaders asked parishioners to pray to avert a disaster. Seagulls arrived
in hoards, ate the grasshoppers, and the crops were saved. From the
standpoint of the Mormons, the effects of prayer were positive. But what
about the grasshoppers?

During World War II, the famous pilot Eddie Rickenbacker was forced
to land in the Pacific Ocean and, with seven companions, drifted for 24
days in a lifeboat before being rescued by a navy plane. On the verge of
perishing from lack of food and water, the men prayed for help. Out of
nowhere, a bird landed on Rickenbacker, and he captured and killed it.
From Rickenbacker’s point of view, his prayer was positive. But what
about the bird?

When the torturers of the Inquisition tightened the racks and
twisted the thumbscrews on "heretics," they mumbled prayers that their
victims repent and their souls be saved. The inquisitors’ tears mingled
with the blood of their victims on torture chamber floors throughout
Europe. Unfortunately, the pattern endures. Prayer continues to be mixed
with violence in the name of religion, as the recent orgies of ethnic
cleansing by devout Christians and Muslims in Bosnia show.

We may insist that we’re not religious nuts or killers, but all of
us find ourselves in situations where we believe, at the end of day, that
we’re right and others are wrong. So, in our culture, where 80 percent of
people pray regularly, the stage is set for prayers in which we ask God
to defeat those who don’t share our views.

A woman named Melissa recently told me that for l0 years she had
struggled unsuccessfully to be a writer. Finally her mother admitted that
from the time Melissa was a teenager, she had prayed to God every night
that her daughter would fail. "Writers tell things that should not be
told, about themselves and their families," she said to her daughter.
"I’ve always known that God had something better for you."

Melissa saw her mother’s prayers as a curse offered in the name of
God. She began to pray for protection and guidance. Three years later she
published her first novel.

THE BOOK ON NEGATIVE PRAYER

Of course, negative prayer is not a new phenomenon. As long as
people have prayed to an absolute and almighty being, they have prayed to
both help themselves and harm others. The breadth of negative prayer can
range from the mild to the deadly, from the simple prayer for individual
gain to curses to an ancient death prayer that flourished earlier in this
century among shamans in Hawaii.

Curses–which can be considered a form of negative prayer–are
right at home in the Bible and have often been employed by the spiritual
elite. The prophet Elisha, for example, caused 42 children to be devoured
by bears for making fun of his baldness. The apostle Paul struck a
sorcerer blind. And even Christ blasted an apparently innocent fig tree
for not bearing fruit.

In the Hispanic cultures of southern Texas and the Southwest,
witchcraft (brujeria), sorcery (hechiceria), and the evil eye (mal ojo)
are integral parts of folk culture. Vibrant traditions involving hexes,
spells, and curses continue in the Sea Islands off the coasts of South
Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The Vodoun tradition, with its famous
voodoo practices, has spread from Africa to the Caribbean and the West
Indies, and then to many major urban centers in the United States.

One of the most dramatic pieces of anthropological research
suggesting the power of negative prayer is the custom of ana-ana, or the
"death prayer," which originated in Polynesia and spread to the Hawaiian
Islands. This practice was reported in great detail by American
psychologist Max Freedom Long, who went to Hawaii in 1917, and from his
position as a schoolteacher had the unique opportunity to investigate
this custom. Quite simply, shamans would "pray to death" a person who was
causing social unrest, who often lived on another island and did not even
know he or she was the subject of harmful prayer.

One of the more remarkable features of the death prayer was that
the victims often died in the same way–from what we now call ascending
paralysis. First, the lower extremities became numb and then paralyzed,
the paralysis gradually rising through the body until it reached the
lungs, when the victim died of respiratory failure. Today, we would
probably identify this kind of illness as Guillain-Barre syndrome, a
disease that is virtually clinically identical to that induced by the
death prayer. The illness sometimes follows a viral infection, but half
the cases arise spontaneously, and their cause is unknown. Patients are
kept alive on ventilators until the disease subsides, which can take
weeks. Could this disease, and other illnesses of unknown origin, be due
in part to the negative wishes or prayers of others? Unless we consider
the possibility that prayer can harm, we will never know.

It’s easy to think negative prayer practices are confined to only
primitive cultures. But after years of study, I’m convinced that the
malevolent use of prayer is quite common, woven into our society and our
lives. In a 1994 Gallup poll on the prayer habits of Americans published
in Life magazine, five percent of people confessed they’d prayed for harm
to come to others. And that was only the number that admitted it.

GIVING GOD ORDERS

The temptation to manipulate other individuals and situations
through prayer is very strong. Even when we voice the prayer, "Thy will
be done," how many times are we really saying, "My will be done"? Are we
really handing over the outcome of events to God, or are we prayer
vigilantes trying to take matters into our own hands? Even if we fully
believe we are praying for the good of ourselves or others, do we know
the full impact of our prayers? As Beryl Statham, a British writer,
notes, "There is an important difference in demanding a specific answer
and an open-ended prayer for help. Making specific demands can have
tragic results." She relates the experience of a young man whose wife was
dying, and who recruited members of his church to pray for a miracle.
When his wife died anyway, he suffered a mental collapse from which he
never fully recovered.

We constantly underestimate the awesome complexity of the world,
and the way in which we are linked in feedback loops and systems that
even computers cannot decipher. Our prayers may reflect this. Sociologist
Charles Perrow has shown that unintended negative consequences often
follow when we intervene in situations that are extremely complex. We
often don’t understand the consequences that our prayers, if answered,
might generate.

Think about our prayers for happiness. What could be simpler than
praying for joy? Yet George L. Engel, M.D., professor of medicine and
psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, has
provided chilling evidence that happiness is not always compatible with
health. Over a six-year period, Dr. Engel collected 170 cases where
sudden death had occurred and analyzed the psychological state of each
individual before their demise. Although most of the fatalities were
accompanied by negative emotions such as intense fear or depression, 6
percent were immediately preceded by experiences of sudden happiness,
such as receiving good news. States such as happiness may not be as
simple or benevolent as we’d like to think. There may be a hidden
calculus, according to which all emotions are more complex than they
seem.

WHY PRAY?

The dark side of life, if properly understood, can be valuable. I
learned this when I served in Vietnam as a battalion surgeon, and wound
up with the worst assignment I’d ever heard of for a physician. I’d gone
to war wanting nothing to do with the madness of combat, but soon I
became completely intoxicated by the warrior archetype. I volunteered for
combat assaults, flew in helicopters to rescue ambushed platoons, and
even applied to paratrooper school. I fantasized returning to the States,
enrolling in infantry school, and returning to Vietnam with my own
platoon. I was an agnostic, and a physician, yet I found myself offering
prayers of thanks to a God I no longer believed in every time a mortar
missed hitting me.

War unmasked my own contradictions, and I was never again able to
convince myself I was as innocent as I’d once believed. Yet many
spiritual traditions, such as Buddhism, explore exactly these
contradictions, and speak of the indissoluble unity of all apparent
opposites. This idea even surfaces in modern physics. The late physicist
David Bohm used the example of a magnet, whose opposite poles cannot
exist without each other.

Refusing to contemplate the dark undertow of life constitutes what
Jungian psychologists call "repressing the shadow"–banishing our nastier
qualities to the unexplored corners of the mind. But as Jung said, a
whole person is one who has both walked with God and wrestled with the
Devil.

The Devil may even have something to teach us. This is reflected in
the root of Satan, stn, which means "one who opposes, obstructs, or acts
as an adversary." The Greek term diabolos literally means "one who throws
something across one’s path." This is virtually identical to the
Trickster figure, one which Jung regarded as an archetypal force in the
human mind, and which is described in countless myths, legends, dreams,
and fairytales worldwide. There is room for this sort of Satan in our
world. In fact, he can do good, because if a path in life is in error, it
may need to be blocked.

Some might call negative prayer evil. Whether evil’s origins are
external, internal, or both, our task in confronting it is always the
same: to transmute it, to learn to act with love and compassion. To make
the unconscious conscious, as Jung put it; to be born again, as Jesus
said; to awaken to wisdom, as Buddha urged.

When I began to explore negative prayer, I asked Native American
shamans in northern New Mexico, where I live, whether they thought this
phenomenon was real. They all said yes. I inquired about their favorite
methods of protection. One shaman asked me jokingly if I’d ever heard of
the Lord’s Prayer. He urged me to read it again, focusing on the phrase,
"Deliver us from evil." "You white people have one of the most powerful
forms of protection, and you don’t even know it," he smiled.

We need to be courageous enough to embark on the hero’s journey,
which involves an encounter with the dark aspects of who we are–not
because it’s romantic or heroic, but because therein lies our one hope of
escaping the compulsions that prevent us from becoming fully
human.

The mere fact that negative prayer exists and that we may wish to
harm others challenges us to engage the totality of existence. Light and
shadow are always irrevocably linked. Or, as Friedrich Nietzsche
reassured us in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "The supreme evil is part of the
supreme good."

The Evil within Us All?

Few scholars have done more to illuminate the history of the
struggle between good and evil than Elaine Pagels, Ph.D., a professor of
religion at Princeton University, and author of The Origin of Satan and
The Gnostic Gospels, a national bestseller. According to Pagels, there
has "always been another side to invocation and prayer. Christian
cosmology, in particular, is split between God’s people and Satan’s
people." That split has profoundly influenced not only the way we
envision the universe, but the way we look at other people.

Pagels began to ponder the shadow side after she lost her young son
to a genetic illness in 1987, and her husband died in a hiking accident
the following year. "I asked myself, `What have I done to deserve this?’
Our religious and cultural heritage suggests that nature follows a moral
order, and so any catastrophe must be some kind of divine punishment. I
found the idea that I could be at fault very enervating, and I felt I had
to learn as much about that cultural legacy as possible, in order to move
beyond it."

Pagels found an inspiring alternative to the cosmic war of good and
evil in the Gospel of Philip, written between 70 and 100 C.E. Philip
suggests that all opposites–light and dark, life and death, good and
evil–are in reality interdependent. "Philip writes of gnosis, or
spiritual understanding," says Pagels. "Essential to gnosis is to know
one’s own potential for evil. If we remain unaware of our own darker
tendencies, they’re powerful, but as soon as those tendencies are
recognized, they can be destroyed," Pagels says. Philip’s teachings, like
those of Buddhism, suggest that a person acting out of an impulse to harm
can actually transform the action midstream, simply through awareness.
"It’s harder to sustain the energy needed for rage, greed, or hatred when
you see your own impulse rather than the other person’s supposed
deficiencies," she explains. "You lose the illusion that your action is
justified." Without that illusion, she says, it’s difficult to sustain
the notion of evil as other, and easier to truly embrace a gospel of
love.

JILL NEIMARK

PHOTO (COLOR): Negative prayer is not new. As long as people have
prayed to an Almighty being, they haved prayed to both help and harm
themselves and others.

PHOTO (COLOR): Studies of negative prayer show that we can harm
bacteria at a distance simply through our intention. Can we harm humans
as well?

BY LARRY DOSSEY, M.D.

Larry Dossey, M.D., is the author of six books, including the
bestseller Healing Words, and Prayer Is Good Medicine. He is Executive
Editor of the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and
Medicine.

Reward for Conviction of Abuser Doubledto $20,000(HONG
KONG, 4th January 2006) The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals Hong Kong (SPCA HK) announced the Reward posted for any
information provided leading to the conviction of the Mongkok Cat
Cruelty Abuser has been doubled to $20,000.

With the
widespread publicity scored after the announcement of the reward made
on 22 December 2005, the SPCA (HK) received numerous calls from the
general public, volunteering to donate to team up the reward.

The
SPCA (HK) is in full support in urging the government to revise Cap.
169. “Penalty for animal abuse should bear the same weight to human
violence. Hong Kong, being a world class city, should have the same
respect for animal life as in other leading nations,” said Dr. Fiona
Woodhouse, Deputy Director of Welfare Service, SPCA (HK).

The
SPCA (HK) invites the general public to lend a helping hand to save
these least-fortunate animals. Every piece of information may lead to
the arrest and conviction of the abuser.

For more enquiries, please reach the PR & Communications Department:Fight Animal Abuse SPCA (HK) Pleads Support from the Public

(HONG
KONG, 29th November 2005) The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals Hong Kong (SPCA HK) requests everyone in the community to lend
a helping hand to fight animal abuse.

The SPCA (HK) is very
alarmed by recent reported cases of abuse on kittens taken place in
Mongkok. Unfortunately, incidences as such are only at the tip of the
iceberg. The SPCA (HK) has conducted 479 investigations on cruelty
complaints brought to us by the general public or the authority during
April 2004 to March 2005, a rise from 419 a year earlier. Throughout
the period (2004-2005), 42 warnings have been given out, but only two
prosecutions were successfully filed. Entering into 2005, with
increased public awareness, ten prosecutions have been acted upon
between May to September, 2005.

Animal abuse, whether
intentional or unintentional, will never be tolerated. Since the first
reported abuse case in Mongkok on 23rd September, SPCA Inspectorate
Team has conducted frequent patrols. Unfortunately, so far, no suspects
have been identified.

"The SPCA (HK) is very disappointed
that there seems no progress in revising the Cap. 169 (Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals Ordinance) despite our ongoing effort to push ahead
with the government in the past ten years," said Dr. Fiona Woodhouse,
Deputy Director of Welfare Services, SPCA (HK).

To raise
public awareness on animal abuse & these suspected abuse cases, an
education campaign is being conducted today. Together with help from
volunteers, SPCA (HK) handed out thousands of leaflets to shop owners,
workers and residents in the area, and posters pinned up, inviting the
public to help fight cruelty by reporting any suspect cases with no
delay.

SPCA (HK) reminds the public that animal abuse is
serious and they should report any case of animal abuse to SPCA (HK),
Police or AFCD so that prosecutions can be acted upon.

WASHINGTON — American workers are beginning to
see long-awaited wage gains, though increases remain well below the
levels prior to the 2001 recession.

Average hourly wages for non-supervisory
workers, about 80% of the labor force, have been lagging behind
inflation during much of the recovery. Wage growth is starting to pick
up, with hourly earnings rising 5 cents in December to $16.34,
seasonally adjusted, the Labor Department said Friday.

The 3.1% gain in hourly wages compares with a
2.6% rise in the year ended in December 2004 and 1.7% in 2003. Still,
wage growth is lower than some economists expect in an economy with a
4.9% jobless rate.

"When you’re looking at wages, it’s clear that
they are moving upward. It may be from a low base, but the trend is
clearly up," says John Silvia of Wachovia.

Silvia emphasizes that broader measures of
compensation, including health care and other benefits, which have been
generally rising faster than wages, paint a better picture of employee
gains and business expenses.

Ken Mayland of ClearView Economics points out
that most of the job gains in December have occurred in industries with
above-average wages, such as manufacturing, mining and information
services. That’s part of a longer trend.

But Maury Harris of UBS argues that some of the
gains in high-wage jobs since August are a result of activities related
to reconstruction from Hurricane Katrina. The effect could fade this
year as the housing market and construction employment slow. Harris
predicts that energy-induced inflation increases have also peaked,
which could lead to better purchasing power for consumers.

The pace of wage gains has implications not just
for workers, but the broader economy. The Federal Reserve closely
monitors labor costs, a big driver of inflation.

Silvia says that while wage gains have been
somewhat muted, the movement is in a direction that could cause some
concern at the central bank.

The Fed doesn’t have a formal inflation target
but has been trying to hold core inflation, which doesn’t include food
and energy to about 1% to 2% a year. "If the Fed is truly serious about
a 2% inflation target … you don’t have a lot of room to play with,"
he says.

Mayland says the wage gain "is not a worrisome situation for the inflation situation."